Menu

SWR XXI – DAY 3 – Partyboy Report

Day 3 began with a massive hangover and the need for a shower. Yes, unlike Dick, I take showers at SWR. Unfortunately, it rained the day before so I had to dry my underpants at the entrance, where the sun was the brightest. This made us a little late to the stages, three bands late actually.

“Altarage” were playing their strange and appealing black metal to an excited crowd when we arrived. Mysterious and enthralling, wish we had seen more of it.

We missed “Black Panda”, not sure why though. However, we saw these guys putting the final nail in Cave 45’s coffin. It was extra lit. They probably did it again…and we missed it. Damn you, beer!

Last dilemma of SWR this year: since we’ve seen “Dead Meat” in the past being awesome on stage (some of it quiterecently), we decided to pass on it this time. Too bad, “Dead Meat” is some tasty-ass death metal.

So, the choice was clear. Time for the main stage!

UK protein guzzling badasses “Dyscarnate” were about to put the whole festival to work on their sexy, bodacious bodies. However, they were mostly interested in the muscles on our necks! With their heavy hammering tunes, all the necks banged themselves into shape. Ah, the gym never looked better. I was shocked by the lack of people who brought their dumbbells. Why the fuck was it that no one was doing push-ups in the pit?

Anyway, “Dyscarnate” was heavy as shit, they bludgeoned our balls back to the stone age without the need for speed.

More bands we’ve seen in the past followed. We tried not to miss “Irae”, but we failed. It’s great that they share our distaste for Vagos as a festival, though. We may have missed “Irae’s” awesome black metal show, but we made sure as many people as possible knew that their album is one of the best around.

Next it was time for some old school, filthy, fucking grindcore up in your tender ass cavity.

“Agathocles” played so many songs that we missed one while taking three steps towards the stage. This is not exaggeration for dramatic effect. With a discography that is longer than an elephant’s hard penis, each release with more songs than your mother has had sexual partners, the Dutch veterans started to fuck everything in sight with short bursts of extreme, crusty mincecore. This was the part of the festival that most resembled a post-apocalyptic wasteland gang war, let that sink in while you think about why you skipped this band.

Story time! Back in 2015, “Suma” was confirmed for SWR. We heard them, enjoyed it, got excited! FUCK YEAH SUM…”, annnd they cancelled a few weeks before the festival. A massive bummer for us. Not only that, the garbage disposal company around town is called SUMA! So, Suma logos and stickers everywhere, on every fucking corner of the street for years! But now, they returned and actually played! Finally, the hype is real.

Maybe it was the fact that “Suma” played after “Agathocles”, but their show didn’t hit us as hard as expected. This is the problem with hype, though; “Suma” was still good, but to fill expectations two years in the making is a very hard task. Just ask the idiots who made Duke Nukem forever. Don’t get us wrong, “Suma” is a great band to listen at home, maybe they would have been better by themselves.

But right after a brutal bitchslap like “Agathocles”, it feels a little anticlimactic, underwhelming. Still good though, still good.

Main event time! Another band we’ve been waiting to see for quite a while, the legendary filthy Satan fuckers, “Carpathian Forest”. The theme from Nekromantik echoed through the festival and the Norwegian Black Metal ritual began. The show wasn’t bad, plenty of delicious classics thrown our way, as well as cover songs from Turbonegro and The Cure. They kinda flopped the “A forest” cover, but who cares? Black metal! Morbid Fascination of DEATH!

Nattefrost spent most of his time throwing Tostada cookies to the audience, we shit you not. The front man for a legit 90’s, church burning, blood sniffing, Norwegian black metal band was throwing cookies to the audience. Niklas Kvarforth, take notes.

After the blackness, another Norwegian band surprised us in the butt and we never saw it coming. Black thrash act “Nekromantheon” used their music to thoroughly beat the audience into falling in love with them. A massive performance that no one there will forget; moshing like it was the main stage, non-stop violence from the band, the audience completely blown away by the sound. A very successful formula for bands: you put a trve Norwegian black metal band playing on the main stage, no mosh, no fun. All the mosh junkies get itchy; tension builds up. Then you throw them some thrashness from stage two and you have the recipe for absolute brutality on stage two. Happened last year with Lich King playing after Mayhem; a great idea then and one that held up this year.

Many metal junkies left saying “Nekromantheon” was the best show of SWR this year, which is quite a bold statement, but suffice to say that they were definitely up there.

This show left us a little dazed and dehydrated, so we went to get drinks and got distracted for a while, as per usual, and we missed the next two bands. However! We did catch a glimpse of “Church of Misery” a few years ago at Sonicblast, it was very 70’s.

Here’s a more updated version from the people who actually saw them:

“Untamed and simplistic, but unforgettable”

“Riffs that took me to other latitudes”

And so on, and so forth, that was Church of Misery.

We came back in time to watch the last party of SWR XXI: civil construction workers turned cavemen, “Raw Decimating Brutality”. This was our third (fourth?) time seeing them live, because we’ve already seen them in other places as well. Bottom line, RDB is always great, you should always watch them. On our very first time seeing them, we were completely torn. It was SWR 2013, they were playing outside, but Onslaught were about to start inside, we’d never seen either band before and RDB was putting one hell of a performance! It was hard to pull ourselves away from that show, but we had to.

This year, they brought a new album and a new prehistoric attitude. The moshing was as fit as it could’ve been for an SWR ending; every drunk soul in sight was throwing itself into the pit. They even brought a giant menhir to the party. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a tall, fat boulder, the ones Obelix used to hit the romans in the dick with.

Massive destruction and relentless partying, the menhir ended up in the crowd being torn to shreds. That’s right, the crowd tore the giant boulder to shreds! The power of metal and alcohol is unstoppable.

As SWR XXI came to an end, the party continued with DJ’s and shit. We went to drink some vodka with members from Analepsy and Back Alley Lobotomy until the sun came up. Another amazing year, no surprises there. If you’re one of the lucky bastards who got home with an exclusive DOD magazine, good for you. If you didn’t, re-prints will be limited but available.

Enjoy the photo gallery and videos of the event (we’re pretending 99% of the audience didn’t scroll past all this text to get to that).